my suit-case and take from it the
leather purse-belt with the Ambulance funds in it, and I bring it to the
Commandant and lay it before him and compel him to put it on. As I do
this I feel considerable compunction, as if I were launching a
three-year-old child in a cockle-shell on the perilous ocean of finance.
I remind him that fifteen pounds of the money in the belt is his (he
would be as likely as not to forget it). As for the accounts, they are
so clear that a three-year-old child could understand them. I notice
with a diabolical satisfaction which persists through the all-pervading
peace by no means as incongruously as you might imagine--I notice
particularly that the Commandant doesn't like this part of it a bit.
There is not anybody in the Corps who wants to be responsible for its
funds or enjoys wearing that belt. But it is obvious that if the Ambulance
can bear to be separated from its Treasurer-Secretary-Reporter, in the
flight from Ghent, it cannot possibly bear to be separated from its funds.

I am alone with the Commandant while this happens, standing by one of
the writing-tables in the lounge. Ursula Dearmer (she grows more mature
every day) and the War Correspondents and a few Generals have melted
somewhere into the background. The long, lithe pigskin belt lies between
us on the table--between my friend and me--like a pale snake. It exerts
some malign and poisonous influence. It makes me say things, things
that I should not have thought it possible to say. And it is all about
the shells at Alost.

He is astonished.

And I do not care.

I am sustained, exalted by that sense of righteousness you feel when you
are insanely pounding somebody who thinks that in perfect sanity and
integrity he has pounded you.

[_Saturday, 3rd._]

Mr. L. asked me to breakfast. He has told me more about the Corps in
five minutes than the Corps has been able to tell me in as many days. He
has seen it at Alost and Termonde. You gather that he has seen other
heroic enterprises also and that he would perjure himself if he swore
that they were indispensable. Every Correspondent is besieged by the
leaders of heroic enterprises, and I imagine that Mr. L. has been "had"
before now by amateurs of the Red Cross, and his heart must have sunk
when he heard of an English Field Ambulance in Ghent. And he owns to
positive terror when he saw it, with its girls in breeches, its
Commandant in Norfolk jacket, grey knickerbockers, heather-