I remember one evening at Dunkirk when we couldn't get rooms or food because the landlady of the hotel had lost all her servants. The staff at the ---- gave me a meal, but there was a queer want of courtesy about it. I said that anything would do for my supper, and I went to help get it myself. I spied a roll of cold veal on a shelf, and said helpfully that that would do splendidly, but the answer was: "Yes, but I believe that is for our next meal." However, in the end I got a scrap, consisting mostly of green stuffing.
"But when thou art bidden, go and sit down in the lowest room"—ah, my dear Lord, in this world one may certainly take the lowest place, and keep it. It is only the great men who say, "Friend, come up higher."
"You can't have it," is on everyone's lips, and a general sense of bustle goes with the brutality. "You can't come here," "We won't have her," are quite common phrases. God help us, how nasty we all are!
I find one can score pretty heavily nowadays by being a "psychologist." All the most disagreeable people I know are psychologists, notably ——, who breaks his promises and throws all his friends to the wolves, but who can still explain everything in his sapient way by saying he is a psychologist.
One thing I hope—that no one will ever call me "highly strung." I wish good old-fashioned bad temper was still the word for highly strung and nervy people.
... I am longing for beautiful things, music, flowers, fine thoughts....
LA PANNE
La Panne. 25 February.—At last I have succeeded in getting away from Dunkirk! The Duchess of Sutherland brought me here in her car. Last night I dined with Mrs. Clitheroe. She was less bustled than usual, and I enjoyed a chat with her as we walked home through the cold white mist which enshrouded La Panne.
This long war has settled down to a long wait. Little goes on except desultory shelling, with its occasional quite useless victims. At the station we have mostly "malades" and "éclopés"; in the trenches the soldiers stand in the bitter cold, and occasionally are moved out by shells falling by chance amongst them. The men who are capable of big things wait and do nothing.
If it was not for the wounded how would one stand the life here? A man looks up patiently, dumbly, out of brown eyes, and one is able to go on again.