at we have not, and never have had, a
vestige of a committee. We all work along in the jolliest possible way,
and we have no meetings, or agenda, or minutes, or co-opting of
additional members, or remitting to executives or anything of that kind.
We just bring along anything that we think will be useful. Some of us
bring clothes and others butter or umbrellas, or French books, or
razor-strops or cigarettes. Hepburn, the dairy farmer, keeps sending
cart-loads of cabbages; old Miss Mackintosh at the Brae Foot sends
threepence a week. And when we are short of anything we just stick up a
notice to that effect in the village shop. I issued a call for jam
yesterday and ever since it has rained pots and pots. We have three
large families of Belgians and we have already got to the stage where
the men are at work and the children at school--though no one really has
the least idea what they do there.

But although I admit that it is magnificent to be without a
committee--we escaped from that by the simple plan of getting the
Belgians first and trusting to the goodwill of the Parish to take care
of them afterwards--there are other important factors in our success.
There is our extraordinary foresight--of course it was a pure fluke
really--in obtaining among them a real Belgian policeman. You can have
no idea what a fine sense of security that gives us in case anything
goes wrong. We have already enjoyed his assistance in a variety of ways,
and we have something still in reserve in the very unlikely event of his
being professionally called in--his uniform. When we put him into his
uniform the effect will be tremendous.

Then again we have the advantage of being Scotch. I simply don't know
how English country people are going to get on at all. Here we find that
by talking with great emphasis in the very broadest Scotch--by simply
calling soap _sape_ and a church a _kirk_ you can quite frequently bring
it off and make yourself understood. I had a most exhilarating hour of
mutual lucidity with the one that makes furniture in the carpenter's
shop. It seemed to me that he called a saw a _zog_, which was surely
quite good enough; and when he referred to a hammer as a _hamer_ it
might surely be said to be equivalent to calling a spade a spade.

Still the language difficulty remains, and the worst of it is that it
gives an altogether unfair advantage--where all are so anxious to
help--to the few select people in our neighbourhood who hap