at a time like this not the light-hearted, sportsmanlike
fighting men at the front, nor sober people left behind in homes, but
newspapers are likely to be an outsider's most constant companions.

A sort of spiritual asphyxiation overtook one at last, in which the mere
stony Briticism of the London hotel seemed to have a part. If you awoke
again into that taste of soft-coal smoke, went down to another of those
staggering lamp-lit breakfasts. But why staggering? "Can you not take
coffee and rolls in London as well as in some Paris cafe"? It would seem
so, yet it cannot be done. The mere sight and sound--or lack of sound--
of that warm, softly carpeted breakfast-room, moving like some gloomy,
inevitable mechanism as it has moved for countless years, attacks the
already weakened will like an opiate. At the first bewildering '"Q?"
from that steely-fronted maid the ritual overpowers you and you bow
before porridge, kippers, bacon and eggs, stewed fruit, marmalade,
toast, more toast, more marmalade, as helpless as the rabbit before the
proverbial boa--except that in this case the rabbit swallows its own
asphyxiator.

Another breakfast like this, another day of rain and fog, another '"Q?"
--it was in some such state of mind as this that I packed up one night
and took the early train for Folkestone.

Folkestone, Friday.

Sunshine at last--a delicious autumn afternoon--clean air, quiet, and
the sea. Far below the cliff walk, trawlers crawling slowly in; along
the horizon a streak of smoke from some patrolling destroyer or
battleship. And all along this cliff walk, Belgians--strolling with
their children, sitting on the benches, looking out to sea. Just beyond
that hazy white wall to the east--the cliffs of France--the fight for
Calais is being fought--they can almost hear the cannon.

In the stillness, as they drift by, you catch bits of their talk:

"It was two o'clock in the morning when we left Antwerp."

"And imagine--it was not three metres from our doorstep that the shell
burst."

"We walked forty kilometres that night and in the morning-------"

On the balcony of some one's summer-house, now turned into a hospital,
four Belgian soldiers, one with his head bandaged, are playing cards--
jolly, blond youngsters, caps rakishly tipped over one ear, slamming the
cards down as if that were the only thing in the world. In the garden
others taking the sunshine, some with their wheel-chairs pushed through
the shrub