class fighting men to attend to their own
business--the fighting.

There are quite a little budget of knotty points to settle between
Hunter-Weston and d'Amade, so I made a careful note of them and went
along to French Headquarters. By bad luck d'Amade was away, up in the
front trenches, and I could not well deliver myself to des Coigns. So I
said I would come again sometime to-morrow and once more wended my way
along the busy beaches, and in doing so revisited the Turkish defences
of "V" and "W." The more I look, the more do I marvel at the invincible
spirit of the British soldier. Nothing is impossible to him; no General
knows what he can do till he tries. Therefore, he, the British General,
must always try! must never listen to the rule-of-thumb advisers who
seek to chain down adventure to precedent. But our wounds make us weaker
and weaker. Oh that we could fill up the gaps in the thinned ranks of
those famous Regiments....!

Had ten minutes' talk with the French Captain commanding the battery of
75's now dug in close to the old Fort, where General d'Amade sleeps, or
rather, is supposed to sleep. Here is the noisiest spot on God's earth.
Not only do the 75's blaze away merrily from morn till dewy eve, and
again from dewy eve till morn, to a tune that turns our gunners green
with envy, but the enemy are not slow in replying, and although they
have not yet exactly found the little beggars (most cunningly concealed
with green boughs and brushwood), yet they go precious near them with
big shell and small shell, shrapnel and H.E. As I was standing here I
was greeted by an old Manchurian friend, le capitaine Reginald Kahn. He
fought with the Boers against us and has taken his immense bulk into one
campaign after another. A very clever writer, he has been entrusted by
the French Government with the compilation of their official history of
these operations.

On my way back to the _Arcadian_ (we are leaving the _Queen Elizabeth_
for a time)--I met a big batch of wounded, knocked out, all of them, in
the battle of the 28th. I spoke to as many of them as I could, and
although some were terribly mutilated and disfigured, and although a few
others were clearly dying, one and all kept a stiff upper lip--one and
all were, or managed to appear--more than content--happy! This scene
brought tears into my eyes. The courage of our soldiers goes far beyond
belief. Were it not so war would be unbearable. How strongly God keeps
the bal