of Newlands standing fixed on the steps of the
Hospital, looking like Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, in khaki, and flatly
refusing to drive his car into Bruges, not only if we were in his car,
but if one woman went with the expedition in any other car.

He stood there, very upright, on the steps of the Hospital, and rather
pale, while the Commandant and Mrs. Torrence surged up to him in fury.
The Commandant told him he would be sacked for insubordination, and Mrs.
Torrence, in a wild flight of fancy, threatened to expose him "in the
papers."

But Newlands stood his ground. He was even more like Lord Kitchener than
Tom. He simply could not get over the idea that women were to be
protected. And to take the women into Bruges when the Germans were, for
all we knew, _in_ Bruges, was an impossibility to Newlands, as it would
have been to Lord Kitchener. So he went on refusing to take his car into
Bruges if one woman went with the expedition. In retort to a charge of
cold feet, he intimated that he was ready to drive into any hell you
pleased, provided he hadn't got to take any women with him. He didn't
care if he _was_ sacked. He didn't care if Mrs. Torrence _did_ report
him in the papers. He wouldn't drive his car into Bruges if one woman--

Here, in his utter disregard of all discipline, the likeness between
Newlands and Lord Kitchener ends. Enough that he drove his car into
Bruges on his own terms, and Mrs. Torrence and I were left behind.

The expedition to Bruges returned safely with the forty-seven Belgian
wounded.

We found rooms in a large hotel on the Digue, overlooking the sea.
Before evening I went round to the Hospital to see Miss Ashley-Smith's
three wounded men. The _Kursaal_ is built in terraces and galleries
going all round the front and side of it. I took the wrong turning round
one of them and found myself in the doorway of an immense ward. From
somewhere inside there came loud and lacerating screams, high-pitched
but appallingly monotonous and without intervals. I thought it was a man
in delirium; I even thought it might be poor Fisher, of whose attacks we
had been warned. I went in.

I had barely got a yard inside the ward before a kind little rosy-faced
English nurse ran up to me. I told her what I wanted.

She said, "You'd better go back. You won't be able to stand it."

Even then I didn't take it in, and said I supposed the poor man was
delirious.

She cried out, "No! No! He is having his leg take