e anything that is lying about.

[Page Heading: THE FIGHTING AT DIXMUDE]

There are two war correspondents here--Mr. Gibbs and Mr. Ashmead
Bartlett--and they told me about the fighting at Dixmude last night. I
must try to get Mr. Gibbs's newspaper account of it, but nothing will
ever be so simple and so dramatic as his own description. He and Mr.
Bartlett, Mr. Gleeson and Dr. Munro, with young Mr. Brockville, the War
Minister's son, went to the town, which was being heavily shelled.
Dixmude was full of wounded, and the church and the houses were falling.
The roar of things was awful, and the bursting shells overhead sent
shrapnel pattering on the buildings, the pavements, and the cars.

Young Brockville went into a house, where he heard wounded were lying,
and found a pile of dead Frenchmen stacked against a wall. A bursting
shell scattered them. He went on to a cellar and found some living men,
got the stretchers, loaded the cars and bade them drive on. In the
darkness, and with the deafening noises, no one heard his orders
aright, the two motor ambulances moved on and left him behind amongst
the burning houses and flying shells. It was only after going a few
miles that the rest of the party found that he was not with them.

Mr. Gleeson and Mr. Bartlett went back for him. Nothing need be said
except that. They went back to hell for him, and the other two waited in
the road with the wounded men. After an hour of waiting these two also
went back.

I asked Mr. Gibbs if he shared the contempt that some people expressed
for bullets. He and Mr. Gleeson both said, "Anyone who talks of contempt
for bullets is talking nonsense. Bullets mean death at every corner of
the street, and death overhead and flying limbs and unspeakable sights."
All these men went back. All of them behaved quietly and like gentlemen,
but one man asked a friend of his over and over again if he was a
Belgian refugee, and another said that a town steeple falling looked so
strange that they could only stand about and light cigarettes. In the
end they gave up Mr. Brockville for lost and came home with the
ambulances. But he turned up in the middle of the night, to everyone's
huge delight.

_23 October._--A crisp autumn morning, a courtyard filled with motors
and brancardiers and men in uniform, and women in knickerbockers and
puttees, all lighting cigarettes and talking about repairs and gears and
a box of bandages. The mornings always start happily en