e.
The instructors here, as at other training-camps in France, are all men
returned from the front. The men to whom they have to give the final touch
of training--men so near themselves to the real thing--are impatient of
any other sort.

As we stand beside the trenches under the bright sun and piercing wind,
looking at the dark lines of British soldiers on the snow, and listening
to the explanations of a most keen and courteous officer, one's eyes
wander, on the one side, over the great town and port, over the French
coast and the distant sea, and on the other side, inland, over the
beautiful French landscape with its farms and country houses. Everything
one sees is steeped in history, a mingled history, in which England and
France up to five centuries ago bore an almost equal share. Now again they
are mingled here; all the old enmities buried in a comradeship that goes
deeper far than they, a comradeship of the spirit that will surely mould
the life of both nations for years to come.

How we grudged the snow and the low-sweeping clouds and the closed motor,
on our drive of the next day! I remember little more of it than occasional
glimpses of the tall cliffs that stand sentinel along the river, a hasty
look at a fine church above a steeply built town, an army lorry stuck deep
in the snow-drifts, and finally the quays and ships of another base port.
Our escort, Colonel S., pilots us to a pleasant hotel full of officers,
mostly English, belonging to the Lines of Communications, with a few poor
wives and mothers among them who have come over to nurse their wounded in
one or other of the innumerable hospitals of the base.

Before dinner the general commanding the base had found me out and I had
told my story.

"Oh, we'll put some notes together for you. We were up most of last night.
I dare say we shall be up most of this. But a little more or less doesn't
matter." I protested most sincerely. But it is always the busiest men who
shoulder the extra burdens; and the notes duly reached me. From them, from
the talk of others spending their last ounce of brain and energy in the
service of the base, and from the evidence of my own eyes, let me try and
draw some general picture of what that service is: Suppose a British
officer speaking:

Remember first that every man, every horse, every round of
ammunition, every article of clothing and equipment, all the
guns and vehicles, and nearly all the food have to be