or, after all those were the folk
who spent the money! They dressed in white tents that gleamed against
the sea, and a pretty splash of color they made on a bright day for
the soberer folk to go and watch, as they sat on the low chalk cliffs
above them!

Gone--gone! Such days have passed for Folkestone! They will no doubt
come again--but when? When?

June the seventh! Folkestone should have been gay for the beginning
of the onset of summer visitors. Sea bathing should just have been
beginning to be attractive, as the sun warmed the sea and the beach.
But when we reached the town war was over all. Men in uniform were
everywhere. Warships lay outside the harbor. Khaki and guns, men
trudging along, bearing the burdens of war, motor trucks, rushing
ponderously along, carrying ammunition and food, messengers on
motorcycles, sounding to all traffic that might be in the way the
clamorous summons to clear the path--those were the sights we saw!

How hopelessly confused it all seemed! I could not believe that there
was order in the chaos that I saw. But that was because the key to
all that bewildering activity was not in my possession.

Every man had his appointed task. He was a cog in the greatest
machine the world has ever seen. He knew just what he was to do, and
how much time had been allowed for the performance of his task. It
was assumed he would not fail. The British army makes that
assumption, and it is warranted.

I hear praise, even from men who hate the Hun as I hate him, for the
superb military organization of the German army. They say the
Kaiser's people may well take pride in that. But I say that I am
prouder of what Britain and the new British army that has come into
being since this war began have done than any German has a right to
be! They spent forty-four years in making ready for a war they knew
they meant, some day, to fight. We had not had, that day that I first
saw our machine really functioning, as many months for preparation as
they had had years. And yet we were doing our part.

We had had to build and prepare while we helped our ally, France, to
hold off that gray horde that had swept down so treacherously through
Belgium from the north and east. It was as if we had organized and
trained and equipped a fire brigade while the fire was burning, and
while our first devoted fighters sought to keep it in check with
water buckets. And they did! They did! The water buckets served while
the hose was ma