ger to be presented to these ladies and
paid them handsome compliments. I think the presence of these
young women with their hypodermic syringes and first-aid bandages,
and their skill in driving heavy motor-cars, and their spiritual disregard
of danger, gave a sense of comfort and tenderness to those men
who had been long absent from their women-folk and long-suffering
in the bleak and ugly cruelty of war. There was no false sentiment, no
disguised gallantry, in the homage of the Belgians to those ladies. It
was the simple, chivalrous respect of soldiers to dauntless women
who had come to help them when they were struck down and needed
pity.

Women, with whom for a little while I could call myself comrade, I
think of you now and marvel at you! The call of the wild had brought
some of you out to those fields of death. The need of more
excitement than modern life gives in time of peace, even the chance
to forget, had been the motives with which two or three of you, I think,
came upon these scenes of history, taking all risks recklessly, playing
a man's part with a feminine pluck, glad of this liberty, far from the
conventions of the civilized code, yet giving no hint of scandal to
sharp-eared gossip. But most of you had no other thought than that
of pity and helpfulness, and with a little flame of faith in your hearts
you bore the weight of bleeding men, and eased their pain when it
was too intolerable. No soldiers in the armies of the Allies have better
right to wear the decorations which a king of sorrow gave you for your
gallantry in action.

18

The Germans were still trying to smash their way through the lines
held by the Belgians, with French support. They were making
tremendous attacks at different places, searching for the breaking-
point by which they could force their way to Furnes and on to Dunkirk.
It was difficult to know whether they were succeeding or failing. It is
difficult to know anything on a modern battlefield where men holding
one village are ignorant of what is happening in the next, and where
all the sections of an army seem involved in a bewildering chaos, out
of touch with each other, waiting for orders which do not seem to
come, moving forward for no apparent reason, retiring for other
reasons hard to find, or resting, without firing a shot, in places
searched by the enemy's fire.

The enemy had built eight pontoon bridges over the Yser canal, but
all of them had been destroyed. This