e quay, kindly
welcomed by an officer from G.H.Q. who passes our bags rapidly through
the Custom House, and carries us off to a neighbouring hotel for the
night, it being too late for the long drive to G.H.Q. We are in France
again!--and the great presence of the army is all about us. The quay
crowded with soldiers, the port alive with ships, the grey-blue uniforms
mingling with the khaki--after a year I see it again, and one's pulses
quicken. The vast "effort of England" which last year had already
reached so great a height, and has now, as all accounts testify, been so
incredibly developed, is here once more in visible action, before me.

Next day, the motor arrives early, and with our courteous officer who
has charge of us, in front, we are off, first, for one of the great
camps I saw last year, and then for G.H.Q. itself. On the way, as we
speed over the rolling down country beyond the town, my eyes are keen to
catch some of the new signs of the time. Here is the first--a railway
line in process of doubling--and large numbers of men, some of them
German prisoners, working at it; typical both of the immense railway
development all over the military zone, since last year, and of the
extensive use now being made of prisoners' labour, in regions well
behind the firing line. They lift their heads, as we pass, looking with
curiosity at the two ladies in the military car. Their flat round caps
give them an odd similarity. It is as if one saw scores of the same
face, differentiated here and there by a beard. A docile hard-working
crew, by all accounts, who give no trouble, and are managed largely by
their N.C.O.'s. Are there some among them who saw the massacre at
Dinant, the terrible things in Lorraine? Their placid, expressionless
faces tell no tale.

But the miles have flown, and here already are the long lines of the
camp. How pleasant to be greeted by some of the same officers! We go
into the Headquarters Office, for a talk. "Grown? I should think we
have!" says Colonel----. And, rapidly, he and one of his colleagues run
through some of the additions and expansions. The Training Camp has been
practically doubled, or, rather, another training camp has been added to
the one that existed last year, and both are equipped with an increased
number of special schools--an Artillery Training School, an Engineer
Training School, a Lewis Gun School, a Gas School, with an actual gas
chamber for the training of men in the use of t