e is always a plentiful supply of
hot food ready for the men who, weak from loss of blood, are often
besides faint with hunger."

PART II

AT HOME

HOW THE MESSAGE WAS DELIVERED

_October, 1915._--So much has happened since I came home from Flanders
in June, and I have not had one moment in which to write of it. I found
my house occupied when I returned, so I went to the Petrograd Hotel and
stayed there, going out of London for Sundays.

Everyone I met in England seemed absorbed in pale children with
adenoids. No one cared much about the war. Children in houses nowadays
require food at weird hours, not roast mutton and a good plain Christian
pudding, but, "You will excuse our beginning, I know, dear, Jane has to
have her massage after lunch, and Tom has to do his exercises, and baby
has to learn to breathe." This one has its ears strapped, and that one
is "nervous" and must be "understood," and nothing is talked of but
children. My mother would never have a doctor in the house;
"nervousness" was called bad temper, and was dosed, and stooping was
called "a trick," and was smacked. The children I now see eat far too
much, and when they finish off lunch with gravy drunk out of tumblers
it makes me feel very unwell.

I went to the Breitmeyers, at Rushton Hall, Kettering; it's a fine
place, but I was too tired to enjoy anything but a bed. The next Sunday
I stayed at Chenies, with the Duchess of Bedford--always a favourite
resort of mine--and another week I went to Welwyn.

I met a few old men at these places, but no one else. Everyone is at the
front. The houses generally have wounded soldiers in them, and these
play croquet with a nurse on the lawn, or smoke in the sun. None of them
want to go back to fight. They seem tired, and talk of the trenches as
"proper 'ell."

There is always a little too much walking about at a "week-end." One
feels tired and stiff on Monday. I well remember last summer having to
take people three times to a distant water garden--talking all the time,
too! People are so kind in making it pleasant that they wear one out.

[Page Heading: ERITH]

All the time I was in London I was preparing my campaign of lecturing. I
began with Vickers-Maxim works at Erith, on Wednesday, 9th June, and on
the 8th I went to stay with the Cameron Heads. There was great bustle
and preparation for my lecture, Press people in the house at all hours
of the day, and so on. A great bore for my p