now seven o'clock.

At half-past we are sent down into the kitchen, not to wash up, but, if
you will believe it, to dine. And more hospital orderlies wait on us at
dinner.

The desire of our hearts is to do _something_, if it is only to black
the boots of the angelic beings. But no, there is nothing for us to do.
To-morrow, perhaps, the doctors and stretcher-bearers will be busy. We
hear that only five wounded have been brought into the hospital to-day.
They have no ambulance cars, and ours will be badly needed--to-morrow.
But to-night, no.

We go out into the town, to the Hotel de la Poste, and sit outside the
cafe and drink black coffee in despair. We find our chauffeurs doing the
same thing. Then we go back to our sumptuous hotel and so, dejectedly,
to bed. Aeroplanes hover above us all night.

[_Sunday, 27th._]

We hang about waiting for orders. They may come at any moment. Meanwhile
this place grows incredible and fantastic. Now it is an hotel and now it
is a military hospital; its two aspects shift and merge into each other
with a dream-like effect. It is a huge building of extravagant design,
wearing its turrets, its balconies, its very roofs, like so much
decoration. The gilded legend, "Flandria Palace Hotel," glitters across
the immense white facade. But the Red Cross flag flies from the front
and from the corners of the turrets and from the balconies of the long
flank facing south. You arrive under a fan-like porch that covers the
smooth slope of the approach. You enter your hotel through mahogany
revolving doors. A colossal Flora stands by the lift at the foot of the
big staircase. Unaware that this is no festival of flowers, the poor
stupid thing leans forward, smiling, and holds out her garland to the
wounded as they are carried past. Nobody takes any notice of her. The
great hall of the hotel has been stripped bare. All draperies and
ornaments have disappeared. The proprietor has disappeared, or goes
about disguised as a Red Cross officer. The grey mosaic of floors and
stairs is cleared of rugs and carpeting; the reading-room is now a
secretarial bureau; the billiard-room is an operating theatre; the great
dining-hall and the reception-rooms and the bedrooms are wards. The army
of waiters and valets and chambermaids has gone, and everywhere there
are surgeons, ambulance men, hospital orderlies and the Belgian nurses
with their white overalls and red crosses. And in every corridor and on
every stair