do the
work of two men." That seemed to be the root fact of the moment, and
accommodation and work were being calculated accordingly. Then the
women came, and took their place in the clerical staffs of the various
military departments, of Army or other Headquarters, in the Army
canteens, in the warehouses and depots of the ports. It is clear that,
during the concluding year of the war, they rendered services of which
British women may reasonably be proud; and in the retreat of last
March, by universal testimony, they bore themselves with special
coolness and pluck. Many of them were suddenly involved in the rush
and confusion of battle, which was never meant to come near them. They
took the risks and bore the strain of it with admirable composure. The
men beside whom they marched or rode when depots canteens, and
headquarters disappeared in the general over-running of our fighting
lines, took note! It was yet another page in that history of a new
Womanhood we are all collaborating in to-day. And I will add a last
touch, within my personal knowledge, when in January, at Montreuil, in
a room at G.H.Q., an officer of A. described to me how he had recently
interviewed a gathering of women belonging to Queen Mary's Auxiliary
Army Corps, and had asked them whether they wished to be immediately
demobilised. Almost without exception the answer came: "Not while we
can be useful to the Army." They had enlisted for the war; the war was
not over, in spite of the Armistice; and, though it would be pleasant
to go home, they still stuck to their job.

* * * * *

Thus hastily I have run through the labour of various kinds which was
the base and condition of the fighting force. I have left myself room
for only a few last words as to that Directing Intelligence which was
its brain and soul--_i.e._, the Staff work of the Army--from the
brilliant and distinguished men at General Headquarters immediately
surrounding the Commander-in-Chief, down to the Brigade and Battalion
Staffs, the members of which actually conduct the daily and nightly
operations of war from the close neighbourhood of the fighting line.
In a preceding chapter I have given a general outline of the duties
falling to the Staff of the First Army in the attack on the Hindenburg
line. The range and variety of them was immense. But their success, no
less than the success of the campaign as a whole, depended on the
faithful execution of all the