-have a car, and understand
it yourself. Never did I feel so helpless without one. But the roads are
too bad and too crowded to begin to learn to drive, and there are
difficulties about a garage.

[Page Heading: MY CAR]

This evening Mr. Wood and I went to Hoogstadt, and towed that
_corpse_--my car--up to La Panne for ---- to inspect. The whole Belgian
army seemed to gather round us as we proceeded on our toilsome journey,
with breaking tow-ropes (for the "corpse" is heavy) and defective
steering-gear. _They_ were amused. I was just cracking with fatigue.
Needless to say, ---- didn't come. As the car was a present I can't send
it back without the authority of a chauffeur. If I keep it any longer
they will say I used it and broke it....

There were some fearful bad cases at Hoogstadt to-day, and we were
touched to see an old man sitting beside his unconscious son and keeping
the flies off him, while he sobbed in great gusts. One Belgian officer
told us that the hardest thing he had to do in the war was to give the
order to fire on a German regiment which was advancing with Belgian
women and children in front of it. He gave the order, and saw these
helpless creatures shot down before his eyes.

At the Yser the other night two German regiments got across the river
and found themselves surrounded. One regiment surrendered, and the men
of the other coolly turned their guns on it and shot their comrades
down.

Some of our corps were evacuating women and children the other day. One
man, seeing his wife and daughter stretched out on the ground, went
mad, and ran up and down the field screaming. We see a lot of madness.

_8 May._--The guns sound rather near this morning, and the windows
shake. One never knows what is happening till the wounded come in. I sat
with my watch in my hand and counted the sound of bursting shells. There
were 32 in one minute. The firing is continuous, and very loud, and
living men are under this fire at this moment, "mown down," "wiped out,"
as the horrible terms go. I loathe even the sound of a bugle now. This
carnage is too horrible. If people can't "realise" let them come near
the guns.

They were shelling Furnes again when I was at Steenkerke the other day,
and it was a strange sound to hear the shells whizzing over the peaceful
fields. One heard them coming, and they passed overhead to fall on the
old town. Under them the brown cattle fed unheeding, and old women hoed
undisturbed, and the