The attitude of the French towards the Belgians, whose headquarters lie here, is less enthusiastic than ours; indeed, one might safely say it is one of mistrust. England opened her arms not to the true Belgians alone, that little gallant army to whose valour we owe so much, but, for their sake, indiscriminately to the hordes of German spies who came over with the first influx of refugees, to the dregs of humanity who were let loose when the cosmopolitan prison doors were thrown open.
France was wiser. Hospitality, she said, is all very well, but first of all we will sift our guests and discover which of them are deserving. And sifting them she is, allotting them freedom in their own sphere, but not freedom to circulate in the zone of other armies. Not that France for a moment belittles or undervalues the achievement of that valiant little country or its heroic King, but she realises—as do most Belgians themselves—the danger attendant upon this promiscuous harbouring of unregistered adults whose political leanings may be entirely alien.
In due course, no doubt, when our paroxysm of Belgian mania dies, we too shall come to see the wisdom of this measure.
January 9th. We are now beginning to receive Christmas packages sent out from home some six weeks back, which, owing to lack of sorters to attend to them, have been held up at Havre. Hitherto, the postal arrangements have been most primitive and as surprising as they were vague. Some letters and packages would arrive by the French post, some via the Red Cross service, and yet others by the military mail from Havre. A missive might take anything from three days to four weeks on its way from home.
But now we are less cut off from civilisation, and not only letters but papers as well arrive regularly; and perhaps the most welcome sound of the day is the newsboys' cry as they run along the quay or dart into hotels and hospitals with lightning-like rapidity, heralding their arrival with shouts of "Dailee Mai-il! Mirreure! Times!"
To-day Major X—— asked me to run a canteen for his men, whose lot, too far from the town to be able to enjoy the shops, is far from enviable. True to the principle of doing anything that is needed, I am off home to get the stores together.
January 14th. The five days' "furlough" have passed as a dream, and it was with a sigh of infinite relief that I stepped once more on to French soil.
The extraordinary "let's-muddle-along-it-can't-last-for-ever" attitude at home is distinctly depressing, and the fact that half of the people are quite content to let others do their job whilst they look on with an amused smile and reap the benefit of the shortage of men makes one long to see them well "strafed."
As I sat in the theatre beside an old friend, now an enthusiastic captain in K.'s Army, and thought how soon the brave fellow would be facing the Reality of what he enjoys now so thoroughly as a Theory, and listened to the cheap patriotism of the show, it seemed the cheaper for the lack of action.
Why, after all, should our beautiful island be left with the unfit, the loafers, the "funks" as fathers for the future generations? In every other country the army is representative, not of the pick of the land, but of the average male population. We, however, seem bent on committing race suicide.