anything to make life pleasant for them.

It was, I think, rather hard on men to be sent straight from the
comfort and warmth of a hospital or convalescent camp to a place as
Spartan as this. Instead of having a bed to sleep on, the unfortunate
"detail" found himself condemned to the floor boards of a bell tent,
with a very meagre allowance of well-worn blankets. In cold weather
the change was abrupt and trying, but of course it had to be made
sooner or later, and I suppose the men had no reasonable excuse for
grumbling.

Very much harder on them was the lack of accommodation in the camp.
Things are much better now in this respect; but when I knew the camp
first, there was no recreation room except a small and inconvenient
E.F. Canteen.

The Y.M.C.A. never established itself there. The Church Army put up a
small hut, but sent no worker to look after it; and even that hut was
not opened till the early summer of 1916. By a curious chance the
E.F. Canteen was worked by ladies instead of the usual orderlies. The
ladies were in fact there, running a small independent canteen,
before the E.F. Canteen took over the place. Rather unwillingly, I
think, the E.F. Canteen people took over these ladies. It was a most
fortunate thing that they did so.

Miss L., the head of this little band of workers, was a lady of
unusual ability, energy, and sympathy. I have said that no one in
authority cared for the camp. Miss L., who had no military authority,
not only cared for it--she loved it. It was to her and her assistants
that the camp owed most of what was done for it. I have seen much
splendid work done by our voluntary ladies in France, but I have
never seen better work done under more difficult circumstances than
was done by these ladies.

I suppose it is foolish to be surprised at any evidence of the
blatant vulgarity of the men who earn their living by the horrid
trade of politics. They speak and act after their kind; and it is
probably true that silk purses cannot be made out of sows' ears. Yet
I own to having experienced a shock when Mr. Macpherson in the House
of Commons described our lady workers as "camp followers." Even for a
politician, even in the House of Commons, that was bad.

Miss L. and her assistants had no great organisation behind them to
which they could appeal, which would take their part and fight their
battles. Like the men they worked for, they were "details." The E.F.
Canteen authorities, who employed b