's is a delectable tea-shop. There
is a tea-shop at Bailleul, the "Allies Tea-Rooms." It was started early
in March. It is full of bad blue china and inordinately expensive. Of
the tea-shop at Poperinghe I cannot speak too highly. There is a vast
variety of the most delicious cakes. The proprietress is pleasant and
her maids are obliging. It is also cheap. I have only one fault to find
with it--the room is small. Infantry officers walk miles into Poperinghe
for their tea and then find the room crowded with those young subalterns
who supply us with our bully. They bring in bulldogs and stay a long
time.

Dickebusch used to be a favourite Sunday afternoon's ride for the
Poperinghe wheelers. They would have tea at the restaurant on the north
of Dickebusch Vyver, and afterwards go for a row in the little
flat-bottomed boats, accompanied, no doubt, by some nice dark Flemish
girls. The village, never very pleasant, is now the worse for wear. I
remember it with no kindly feelings, because, having spent a night there
with the French, I left them in the morning too early to obtain a
satisfactory meal, and arrived at Headquarters too late for any
breakfast.

Not far from Dickebusch is the Desolate Chateau. Before the war it was a
handsome place, built by a rich coal-merchant from Lille. I visited it
on a sunny morning. At the southern gate there was a little black and
shapeless heap fluttering a rag in the wind. I saluted and passed on,
sick at heart. The grounds were pitted with shell-holes: the
cucumber-frames were shattered. Just behind the chateau was a wee
village of dug-outs. Now they are slowly falling in. And the chateau
itself?

It had been so proud of its finery, its pseudo-Greek columns, and its
rich furnishings. Battered and confused--there is not a room of it which
is not open to the wind from the sea. The pictures lie prostrate on the
floor before their ravisher. The curtains are torn and faded. The papers
of its master are scattered over the carpet and on the rifled desk. In
the bedroom of its mistress her linen has been thrown about wildly; yet
her two silver brushes still lie on the dressing-table. Even the
children's room had been pillaged, and the books, torn and defaced, lay
in a rough heap.

All was still. At the foot of the garden there was a little village half
hidden by trees. Not a sound came from it. Away on the ridge miserable
Wytschaete stood hard against the sky, a mass of trembling ruins. Then