ambulances are giving up their wounded at the hospital doors. No doubt
she is a tender nurse, for in every case she is nursing vicariously
that nineteen-year-old boy of hers in the trenches.

That morning I visited the various Calais hospitals. It was a bright
morning, sunny and cold. Lines of refugees with packs and bundles were
on their way to the quay.

The frightful congestion of the autumn of 1914 was over, but the
hospitals were all full. They were surgical hospitals, typhoid
hospitals, hospitals for injured civilians, hospital boats. One and
all they were preparing as best they could for the mighty conflict of
the spring, when each side expected to make its great onward movement.

As it turned out, the terrible fighting of the spring failed to break
the deadlock, but the preparations made by the hospitals were none too
great for the sad by-products of war.

The Belgian hospital question was particularly grave. To-day, several
months later, it is still a matter for anxious thought. In case the
Germans retire from Belgium the Belgians will find themselves in their
own land, it is true, but a land stripped of everything. It is for
this contingency that the Allies are preparing. In whichever direction
the line moves, the arrangements that have served during the impasse
of the past year will no longer answer. Portable field hospital
pavilions, with portable equipment, will be required. The destructive
artillery fire, with its great range, will leave no buildings intact
near the battle line.

One has only to follow the present line, fringed as it is with
destroyed or partially destroyed towns, to realise what the situation
will be if a successful offensive movement on the part of the Allies
drives the battle line back. Artillery fire leaves no buildings
standing. Even the roads become impassable,--masses of broken stone
with gaping holes, over which ambulances travel with difficulty.

CHAPTER III

LA PANNE

From Calais to La Panne is fifty miles. Calais is under military law.
It is difficult to enter, almost impossible to leave in the direction
in which I wished to go. But here again the Belgian Red Cross achieved
the impossible. I was taken before the authorities, sharply
questioned, and in the end a pink slip was passed over to the official
of the Red Cross who was to take me to the front. I wish I could have
secured that pink slip, if only because of its apparent fragility and
its astounding wear