was to be in the Boulogne Casino--
center of the gayety of the resort in the old days, but now, for a
long time, turned into a base hospital.

They had played for high stakes there in the old days before the war.
Thousands of dollars had changed hands in an hour there. But they
were playing for higher stakes now! They were playing for the lives
and the health of men, and the hearts of the women at home in Britain
who were bound up with them. In the old days men had staked their
money against the turn of a card or the roll of the wheel. But now it
was with Death they staked--and it was a mightier game than those old
walls had ever seen before.

The largest ward of the hospital was in what had been the Baccarat
room, and it was there I held my first concert of the trench
engagement. When I appeared it was packed full. There were men on
cots, lying still and helpless, bandaged to their very eyes. Some
came limping in on their crutches; some were rolled in in chairs. It
was a sad scene and an impressive one, and it went to my heart when I
thought that my own poor laddie must have lain in just such a room--
in this very one, perhaps. He had suffered as these men were
suffering, and he had died--as some of these men for whom I was to
sing would die. For there were men here who would be patched up,
presently, and would go back. And for them there might be a next
time--a next time when they would need no hospital.

There was one thing about the place I liked. It was so clean and
white and spotless. All the garish display, the paint and tawdry
finery, of the old gambling days, had gone. It was restful, now, and
though there was the hospital smell, it was a clean smell. And the
men looked as though they had wonderful care. Indeed, I knew they had
that; I knew that everything that could be done to ease their state
was being done. And every face I saw was brave and cheerful, though
the skin of many and many a lad was stretched tight over his bones
with the pain he had known, and there was a look in their eyes, a
look with no repining in it, or complaint, but with the evidences of
a terrible pain, bravely suffered, that sent the tears starting to my
eyes more than once.

It was much as it had been in the many hospitals I had visited in
Britain, and yet it was different, too. I felt that I was really at
the front. Later I came to realize how far from the real front I
actually was at Boulogne, but then I knew no better.

I had