cannot possibly end without
bringing these more closely together, all working to the same end in a
more perfect harmony, and that the result of it must be that England will
hereafter be an even more perfect democracy than it has been up to this
time.
France! Glorious France! The conduct of whose government and people in the
war seems to have been absolutely perfect, has at last reached a wonderful
result after her hundred years of agonies and revolutions. We hear from
France no complaints, no internal dissensions, but all the people, mankind
and womankind, working together, each in its proper sphere, to the one
common end, the salvation of the State. I trust that we shall never
forget all that the world and we, especially, owe to France. She is adding
to our obligations now by fighting our battles for us.
And now with her daughter under the special protection and guidance of the
war office, this distinguished woman followed the khaki-clad soldiers of
England, now numbered by millions, across the channel, and everything was
thrown freely open to her. She soon found out what the great supply bases,
on which the British army in France rests, really mean, made up of the
Army Ordnance, Army Service, Army Medical, Railroad, Motor, and Transport,
and she found it a deeply interesting study, "whose work has involved the
labor of some of the best brains in the army," and she learned the
organizing power that has gone to make the career of the English army in
France possible.
There was the immense dock, and its vast storehouse, the largest in the
world, "built three years before the war, partly, it is said, by German
money, to house the growing cotton trade of the port, but now it houses a
large proportion of the food of the British army," a building half a mile
long, bounded on one side by the docks, where the ships discharge the
stores and the men, and on the other by the railway lines where the trains
are perpetually loading for the front. On the quays ships of all nations,
except Germany, are pouring out their stores, and on the other side the
trucks that are going to the front are loading with the supplies that are
wanted for every regiment in the service. Her eyes light upon one wired in
space, labelled "Medical Comforts," and generally known as "The Cage,"
where, while medical necessaries are housed elsewhere, are "the dainties,
the special foods, the easing appliances of all kinds," which are to make
life bearable to
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