ody-belts knitted by nimble-fingered girls, who in suburban
houses and country factories had put a little bit of love into every
stitch; chloroform and morphia for army doctors who have moments
of despair when their bottles get empty; ambulances, instruments,
uniforms, motor lorries; all the letters which came to France full of
prayers and hopes; and all the men who came to fill up the places of
those for whom there are still prayers, but no more hope on this side
of the river. It was the base of the British Expeditionary Force, and the
Army in the field would be starved in less than a week if it were cut off
from this port of supplies.

There was a hangar here, down by the docks, half a mile long. I
suppose it was the largest shed in the world, and it was certainly the
biggest store-cupboard ever kept under lock and key by a Mother
Hubbard with a lot of hungry boys to feed. Their appetites were
prodigious, so that every day thousands of cases were shifted out of
this cupboard and sent by train and motor-car to the front. But always
new cases were arriving in boats that are piloted into harbour across
a sea where strange fish came up from the deeps at times. So the
hangar was never empty, and on the signature of a British officer the
British soldiers might be sure of their bully beef, and fairly sure of a
clean shirt or two when the old ones had been burnt by the order of a
medical officer with a delicate nose and high ideals in a trench.

New men as well as new stores came in the boats to this harbour,
which was already crowded with craft not venturesome in a sea
where one day huge submarine creatures lurked about. I watched
some Tommies arrive. They had had a nasty "dusting" on the
voyage, and as they marched through the streets of the port some of
them looked rather washed out. They carried their rifles upside down
as though that might ease the burden of them, and they had that
bluish look of men who have suffered a bad bout of sea-sickness. But
they pulled themselves up when they came into the chief square
where the French girls at the flower stalls, and ladies at the hotel
windows, and a group of French and Belgian soldiers under the
shelter of an arcade, watched them pass through the rain.

"Give 'em their old tune, lads," said one of the men, and from this
battalion of new-comers who had just set foot in France to fill up gaps
in the ranks, out there, at the front, there came a shrill whistling
chorus of La Ma