eld ambulance. It is with the game of war as it
was with the game of football I used to play with my big brothers in the
garden. The women may play it if they're fit enough, up to a certain
point, very much as I played football in the garden. The big brothers
let their little sister kick off; they let her run away with the ball;
they stood back and let her make goal after goal; but when it came to
the scrimmage they took hold of her and gently but firmly moved her to
one side. If she persisted she became an infernal nuisance. And if those
big brothers over there only knew what I was after they would make
arrangements for my immediate removal from the seat of war.

The Commandant has turned up with Ursula Dearmer. He is drawn to these
War Correspondents who appear to know more than he does. On the other
hand, an ambulance that can get into the firing-line has an irresistible
attraction for a War Correspondent. It may at any moment constitute his
only means of getting there himself.

One of our cars has been sent out to Antwerp with dispatches and
surgical appliances.

The sight of the Commandant reminds me that I have got all the funds of
the Ambulance upstairs in my suit-case in that leather purse-belt--and
if the Ambulance does fly from Ghent without me, and without that belt,
it will find itself in considerable embarrassment before it has
retreated very far.

It is quite certain that I shall have to take my chance. I have asked
the Commandant again (either this evening or earlier) so that there may
be no possible doubt about it: "If we do have to scoot from Ghent in a
hurry I shall have nothing but my wits to trust to?"

And he says, "True for you."

And he looks as if he meant it.[3]

These remarkable words have a remarkable effect on the new War
Correspondent. It is as if the coolness and the courage and the strength
of a hundred War Correspondents and of fifty Red Cross Ambulances had
been suddenly discharged into my soul. This absurd accession of power
and valour[4] is accompanied by a sudden immense lucidity. It is as if
my soul had never really belonged to me until now, as if it had been
either drugged or drunk and had never known what it was to be sober
until now. The sensation is distinctly agreeable. And on the top of it
all there is a peace which I distinctly recognize as the peace of God.

So, while the Commandant talks to the War Correspondents as if nothing
had happened, I go upstairs and unlock