ospitals, though I only saw two,
or perhaps three. One was in an ordinary house in a street, and I think
this must have been the British Field Hospital; for Mrs. Winterbottom
was there. And of all the women I met thus casually "at the front" she
was, by a long way, the most attractive. We went into one or two of the
wards; in others, where the cases were very serious, we were only
allowed to stand for a second in the doorway; there were others again
which we could not see at all.

I think, unless I am rolling two hospitals into one, that we saw a
second--the English Hospital. It was for the English Hospital that we
heard the Commandant inquire perpetually as we made our way through the
strange streets and the boulevards beyond them, following at his own
furious pace, losing him in byways and finding him by some miracle
again. Talk of dreams! Our progress through Antwerp was like one of
those nightmares which have no form or substance but are made up of
ghastly twilight and hopeless quest and ever-accelerating speed. It was
not till it was all over that we knew the reason for his excessive
haste.

When we got to Mrs. St. Clair Stobart's Hospital--in a garden, planted
somewhere away beyond the boulevards in an open place--we had hardly any
time to look at it. All the same, I shall never forget that Hospital as
long as I live. It had been a concert-hall[13] and was built principally
of glass and iron; at any rate, if it was not really the greenhouse that
it seemed to be there was a great deal of glass about it, and it had
been shelled by aeroplane the night before. No great damage had been
done, but the sound and the shock had terrified the wounded in their
beds. This hospital, as everybody knows, is run entirely by women, with
women doctors, women surgeons, women orderlies. Mrs. St. Clair Stobart
and some of her gallant staff came out to meet us on a big verandah in
front of this fantastic building, she and her orderlies in the uniform
of the British Red Cross, her surgeons in long white linen coats over
their skirts. Dr. ---- whom we are to take back with us to Ghent, was
there.

We asked for Miss ----, and she came to us finally in a small room
adjoining what must have been the restaurant of the concert-hall.

I was shocked at her appearance. She was quieter than ever and her face
was grey and worn with watching. She looked as if she could not have
held out another night.

She told us about last night's bombardmen