at the best hotels, and took
lady friends for joy rides in ambulances of magnificent design.
Boulogne became overcrowded with men and women wearing military
uniforms of no known design with badges of mysterious import.

Even the Scotland Yard detectives were bewildered by some of these
people whose passports were thoroughly sound, but whose
costumes aroused deep suspicion. What could they do, for instance,
with a young Hindu, dressed as a boy-scout, wearing tortoise-shell
spectacles, and a field kit of dangling bags, water-bottles, maps,
cooking utensils, and other material suitable for life on a desert isle?
Or what could they say to a lady in breeches and top-boots, with a
revolver stuck through her belt, and a sou'wester on her head, who
was going to nurse the wounded in a voluntary hospital at Nice?
Contingents of remarkable women invaded the chief tea-shops in
Boulogne and caused a panic among the waitresses. They wore
Buffalo Bill hats and blue uniforms with heavy blue coats, which were
literally spangled with brass buttons. Upon their stalwart bosoms were
four rows of buttons, and there was a row of brass on each side of
their top-coats, on their shoulders, and at the back of their waist-belts.
In the light of the tea-shop, where they consumed innumerable buns,
one's eyes became dizzy with all these bits of shining metal. To a
wounded man the sight of one of these ladies must have been
frightening, as though a shell had burst near his bedside, with the glint
of broken steel. Young officers just drafted out with commissions on
which the ink was hardly dry, plucked at their budding moustaches
and said "War is hell."

Some of the older officers, who had been called out after many years
of civilian ease, found the spirit of youth again as soon as they set
foot on the soil of France, and indulged in I the follies of youth as
when they had been sub-lieutenants in the Indian hills. I remember
one of these old gentlemen who refused to go to bed in the Hotel
Tortoni at Havre, though the call was for six o'clock next morning with
quite a chance of death before the week was out. Some younger
officers with him coaxed him to his room just before midnight, but he
came down again, condemning their impudence, and went out into
the great silent square, shouting for a taxi. It seemed to me pitiful that
a man with so many ribbons on his breast, showing distinguished
service, should be wandering about a place where many queer
cha