and heavenly atmosphere we
shall see--we may, indeed, see to-day--the forms of those who have
fallen. They fight still for England, unharmed now and for ever more,
warriors on the side of right, captains of the host which no man can
number, champions of all that we hold good. They are marching on ahead,
and we hope to follow; and when we all meet, and the roll is called, we
shall find them still cheery, I think, still unwavering, and answering
to their good English names, which they carried unstained through a
score of fights, at what price God and a few comrades know.

CHAPTER VI

LAST DAYS IN FLANDERS

_19 May._--In order to get material for my lecture to munition-workers I
was very anxious to see more of the war for myself than is possible at a
soup-kitchen, and I asked at the British Mission if I might be given
permission to go into the British lines. Major ---- in giving me a flat
refusal, was a little pompous and important I thought, and he said it
was _impossible_ to get near the British.

To-day I lunched on the barge with Miss Close, and we took her car and
drove to Poperinghe. I hardly like to write this even in a diary, I am
so seldom naughty! But I really did something very wrong for once. And
the amusing part of it was that military orders made going to Poperinghe
so impossible that no one molested us! We passed all the sentries with a
flourish of our green papers, and drove on to the typhoid hospital with
only a few Tommies gaping at us.

I was amazed at the pleasure that wrong-doing gives, and regretted my
desperately strict past life! Oh, the freedom of that day in the open
air! the joy of seeing trees after looking at one wretched line of rails
for nine months! Lilacs were abloom in every garden, and buttercups
made the fields look yellow. The air was misty--one could hardly have
gone to Poperinghe except in a mist, as it was being so constantly
shelled--but in the mist the trees had a queer light on them which made
the early green look a deeper and stronger colour than I have ever seen
it. There appeared to be a sort of glare under the mist, and the fresh
wet landscape, with its top-heavy sky, radiated with some light of its
own. Oh, the intoxication of that damp, wet drive, with a fine rain in
our faces, and the car bounding under us on the "pave"! If I am interned
till the end of the war I don't care a bit! I have had some fresh air,
and I have been away for one whole day from the smell