city
to another.

Saw Madame F., who looks worried. She suggested that I should come back
to the Hospital. She says it must be inconvenient for the Commandant not
to have his secretary always at hand. At the same time, we are told
that the Hospital is filling up so fast that our rooms will be wanted.
And anyhow, Dr. ---- has got mine.

I have found an absurd little hotel, the Hotel Cecil in the _Place_,
opposite the Hospital, where I can have a room. Then I can be on duty
all day.

Went down to the "Poste." Gave up my room, packed and took leave of the
nice fat _proprietaire_ and his wife.

Driving through the town, I meet French troops pouring through the
streets. There was very little cheering.

Settled into the Hotel Cecil; if it could be called settling when my
things have to stay packed, in case the Germans come before the evening.

The Hotel Cecil is a thin slice of a house with three rooms on each
little floor, and a staircase like a ladder. There is something very
sinister about this smallness and narrowness and steepness. You say to
yourself: Supposing the Germans really do come into Ghent; there will be
some Uhlans among them; and the Uhlans will certainly come into the
Hotel Cecil, and they will get very drunk in the restaurant below; and
you might as well be in a trap as in this den at the top of the slice up
all these abominable little steep stairs. And you are very glad that
your room has a balcony.

But though your room has a balcony it hasn't got a table, or any space
where a table could stand. There is hardly anything in it but a big
double bed and a tall hat-stand. I have never seen a room more
inappropriate to a secretary and reporter.

The proprietor and his wife are very amiable. He is a Red Cross man; and
they have taken two refugee women into their house. They have promised
faithfully that by noon there shall be a table.

Noon has come; and there is no table.

The cars have come back from Lokeren and Nazareth, full of wounded.

Mrs. Lambert and her husband have come back from Lokeren. They drove
right into the German lines to fetch two wounded. They were promptly
arrested and as promptly released when their passports had shown them to
be good American citizens. They brought back their two wounded.
Altogether, ten or fifteen wounded have been brought back from Lokeren
this morning.

[_Afternoon._]

The Commandant has taken me out with the Ambulance for the first time.
We were to