from the Hotel. In his still dreamy
and abstracted movements he was pursued by an excited waiter flourishing
a bill. I forgot whose bill it was (it may have been mine), but anyhow
it wasn't _his_ bill.

We may have thought we were following the retreat of the Belgian Army
when we went from Ghent to Bruges. We were, in fact, miles behind it,
and the regiments we overtook were stragglers. The whole of the Belgian
Army seemed to be poured out on to that road between Ostend and Dunkirk.
Sometimes it was going before us, sometimes it was mysteriously coming
towards us, sometimes it was stationary, but always it was there. It
covered the roads; we had to cut our way through it. It was retreating
slowly, as if in leisure, with a firm, unhasting dignity.

Every now and then, as we looked at the men, they smiled at us, with a
curious still and tragic smile.

And it is by that smile that I shall always remember the look of the
Belgian Army in the great retreat.

Our own retreat--the Ostend-Dunkirk bit of it--is memorable chiefly by
Miss ----'s account of the siege of Antwerp and the splendid courage of
Mrs. St. Clair Stobart and her women.

But that is her story, not mine, and it should be left to her to tell.

[_Dunkirk._]

At Dunkirk the question of the Secretary's transport again arose. It
contended feebly with the larger problem of where and when and how the
Corps was to lunch, things being further complicated by the Commandant's
impending interview with Baron de Broqueville, the Belgian Minister of
War. I began to feel like a large and useless parcel which the
Commandant had brought with him in sheer absence of mind, and was now
anxious to lose or otherwise get rid of. At the same time the Ambulance
could not go on for more than three days without further funds, and, as
the courier to be despatched to fetch them, I was, for the moment, the
most important person in the Corps; and my transport was not a question
to be lightly set aside.

I was about to solve the problem for myself by lugging my lady to the
railway station, when Ursula Dearmer took us over too, in her stride, as
inconsiderable items of the business before her. I have nothing but
admiration for her handling of it.

We halted in the main street of Dunkirk while Mr. Riley and the
chauffeurs unearthed from the baggage-car my hold-all and suit-case and
the British Red Cross lady's hold-all and trunk and Mr. Foster's
kit-bag and Dr. Hanson's suit-case w