The pastry habit is growing
on us all.

We went to the arsenal to-day to see about some repairs to our
ambulances. I saw a German omnibus which had been captured, and the
eagles on it had been painted out with stripes of red paint and the
French colours put in their place. The omnibus was one mass of
bullet-holes. I have seen waggons at Paardeberg, but I never saw
anything so knocked about as that grey motor-bus. The engines and sides
were shattered and the chauffeur, of course, had been killed. We went on
by motor to the "Champs des Aviateurs." We saw one naval aeroplane man,
who told us that he had been hit in his machine when it was 4,000 feet
up in the air. His jacket was torn by a bullet and his machine dropped,
but he was uninjured, and got away on a bicycle.

The more I see of war the more I am amazed at the courage and nerve
which are shown. Death or the chance of death is everywhere, and we meet
it not as fatalists do or those who believe they can earn eternal glory
with a sacrifice, but lightly and with a song. An English girl at
Antwerp was horribly ashamed of some Belgians who skulked behind a wall
when the firing was hottest. She herself remained in the open.

It has been a great comfort to me that I have had a room to myself so
far on this campaign. I find the communal spirit is not in me. The noisy
meals, the heavy bowls of soup, the piles of labelled dinner-napkins,
give me an unexpected feeling of oppressive seclusion and solitude, and
only when I get away by myself do I feel that my soul is restored.

Mr. Gleeson, an American, joined his wife here a couple of days ago: it
was odd to have a book talk again.

_21 October._--A still grey day with a level sea and a few fishing-boats
going out with the tide. On the long grey shore shrimpers are wading
with their nets. The only colour in the soft grey dawn is the little
wink of white that the breaking waves make on the sand. This small empty
seaside place, with its row of bathing-machines drawn up on the beach,
has a look about it as of a theatre seen by daylight. All the seats are
empty and the players have gone away, and the theatre begins to whisper
as empty buildings do. I think I know quite well some of the people who
come to St. Malo les Bains, just by listening to what the empty little
place is saying.

Firing has begun again. We hear that our ships are shelling Ostend from
the sea. The news that reaches us is meagre, but I prefer that to the