Mr. Walter attaches great importance to the fact that the Germans are courageous in victory, but their spirits go down at once under defeat, and he thinks that even one decisive defeat would do wonders in the way of bringing the war to an end. The Russians are preparing for a winter campaign. I look at all my "woollies," and wonder if I had better save some for 1916. What new horrors will have been invented by that time? I hear the Germans are throwing vitriol now! In their results I hate hand grenades more than anything. The poor burnt faces which have been wounded by them are hardly human sometimes, and in their bandages they have a suggestion of something tragically grotesque.

26 May.—We had a great day—rather, a glorious day—at the station yesterday. In the morning I heard that "les anglais" were arriving there, and, although the news was a little startling, I couldn't go early to Adinkerke because I felt so seedy. However, I got off at last in a "camion," and when I arrived I found the little station hospital and salle and Lady Bagot's hospital crowded with men in khaki.

We don't know yet all that it means. The fighting has been fierce and awful at Ypres. Are the hospitals at the base all crowded? Is there no more room for our men? What numbers of them have fallen? Who is killed, and who is left?

All questions are idle for the moment. Only I have a postcard to say that Colin is at the front, so I suppose until the war is over I shall go on being very sick with anxiety. At night I say to myself, as the guns boom on, "Is he lying out in the open with a bullet through his heart?" and in the morning I say, "Is he safe in hospital, and wounded, or is he still with his men, making them follow him (in the way he has) wherever he likes to lead them?" God knows, and the War Office, and neither tells us much.

GAS-POISONING

The men at the station were nearly all cases of asphyxiation by gas. Unless one had actually seen the immediate results one could hardly have credited it. In a day or two the soldiers may leave off twitching and shuddering as they breathe, and may be able to draw a breath fairly, but an hour or two after they have inhaled the deadly German gas is an awful time to see one's men. Most of them yesterday were in bed, but a few sat on canvas chairs round the empty stove in the salle, and all slept, even those in deadly pain. Sleep comes to these tired soldiers like a death. They succumb to it. They are difficult to rouse. They are oblivious, and want nothing else. They are able to sleep anywhere and in any position, but even in sleep they twitch and shudder, and their sides heave like those of spent horses.

It struck me very forcibly that what was immediately wanted was a long draught for each of them of some clean, simple stimulant. I went and bought them red wine, and I could see that this seemed to do good, and I went to the barge and got bottles of whisky and a quantity of distilled water, and we dosed the men. It seemed to do them a wonderful lot of good, and in some way acted as an antidote to the poison. Also, it pulled them together, and they got some quieter sleep afterwards.

Towards the afternoon, indeed, all but one Irishman seemed to be better, and then we began to be cheery, and the scene at the station took colour and became intensely alive. The khaki-clad forms roused themselves, and (of course) wanted a wash. Also, they sat on their beds and produced pocket-combs, and ran them through their hair. In their dirt and rags these poor battered, breathless men began to try to be smart again. It was a tragedy and a comedy all in one. A Highlander, in a shrunk kilt and with long bare legs, had his head bound about with bandages till it looked like a great melon, and his sleeve dangled empty from his great-coat. Others of the Seaforths, and mere boys of the Highland Territorials, wore khaki shirts over their tartan, and these were bullet-torn and hanging in great rents. And some boys still wore their caps with the wee dambrod pattern jauntily, and some had no caps to wear, and some were all daubed about with white bandages stained crimson, and none had hose, and few had brogues. They had breathed poison and received shrapnel, and none of them had slept since Sunday night. They had had an "awful doing," and no one knew how the battle at Ypres had gone, but these were men yet—walking upright when they could, always civil, undismayed, intelligent, and about as like giving in as a piece of granite.

Only the young Scottish boys—the children of seventeen who had sworn in as nineteen—were longing for Loch Lomond's side and the falls of Inversnaid. I believe the Loch Lomond lads believed that the white burn that falls over the rocks near the pier has no rival (although they have heard of Niagara and the Victoria Falls), and it's "oor glen" and "oor country" wi' them all. And one boy wanted his mother badly, and said so. But oh, how ready they were to be cheery! how they enjoyed their day! And, indeed, we did our best for them.

A GARDEN-PARTY