flee before him singing our own praises loudly as we do so. The Marines
lost their kit, spent one night in Antwerp, and went back to England,
where they had an amazing reception amid scenes of unprecedented
enthusiasm! The Government will give them a fresh kit, and the public
will cheer itself hoarse!

[Page Heading: MEN'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS WOMEN]

I could not help thinking, when I read the papers to-day, of our tired
little body of nurses and doctors and orderlies going back quietly and
unproclaimed to England to rest at Folkestone for three days and then to
come out here again. They had been for eighteen hours under heavy shell
fire without so much as a rifle to protect them, and with the immediate
chance of a burning building falling about them. The nurses sat in the
cellars tending wounded men, whom they refused to leave, and then hopped
on to the outside of an ammunition bus "to see the fun," and came home
to buy their little caps and aprons out of their own slender purses and
start work again.

I shall believe in Britishers to the day of my death, and I hope I shall
die before I cease to believe in them, but I do get some disillusions.
At Antwerp not a man remained with us, and the worst of it was they made
elaborate excuses for leaving. Even our sergeant, who helped during the
night, took a comrade off in the morning and disappeared. Both were
wounded, but not badly, and two young English Tommies, very slightly
wounded, left us as soon as the firing began. We saw them afterwards at
the bridge, and they looked pretty mean.

To-night at dinner some officers came in when the food was pretty well
finished, and only some drumsticks of chicken and bits of ham were left.
I am always slow at beginning to eat, and I had a large wing of chicken
still on my plate. I offered this to an officer, who accepted it and
ate it, although he asked me to have a little bit of it. I do hope I
shall meet some cases of chivalry soon.

Firing ceased about 5 o'clock this afternoon, but we are short of news.
The English papers rather annoy one with their continual victories, of
which we see nothing. Everyone talks of the German big guns as if they
were some happy chance. But the Germans were drilling and preparing
while we were making speeches at Hyde Park Corner. Everything had been
thought out by them. People talk of the difficulty they must have had in
preparing concrete floors for their guns. Not a bit of it. There were
innocent dwe