ows, which had, I thought, special value when psychic treatment was
badly needed. Shell-shock was but very imperfectly understood at the
beginning of the war. The football matches and athletic sports did not
need the asset of being an antidote to shell-shock to attract my
patronage. Never in my life had I realized quite so keenly what a
saving trait the sporting instinct is in the Anglo-Saxon--a strain of
it in the Teuton might have even averted this war.

My stay in France enabled me to enjoy that which life on the Labrador
largely denies one--the contact with many educated minds. It was the
custom, if an officer needed a lift along the road, to hail any
passing motor. While walking one day, I took advantage of this
privilege, and found myself driving with Sir Bertrand Dawson, the
King's physician, with whom I thus renewed a most valued
acquaintanceship. On another occasion our host or guest might be Sir
Almroth Wright, the famous pathologist, or Sir Robert Jones would pay
us a visit, or Sir Frederick Treves. In fact, we had chances to meet
many of the great leaders of our profession. Sir Arthur Lawley, the
head of our Red Cross in France, gave me some delightful evenings.
Unquestionably there is an intense pleasure in hearing and seeing
personally the men who are doing things.

Food grew perceptibly scarcer in Boulogne even during my stay. The
_petits gateaux_ got smaller, the hours during which officers might
enter restaurants for afternoon tea became painfully shorter. But they
were not a whit less enjoyable, reminding one as they did of the dear
old days, long before the war was thought of, and before the war of
life had taken me to Labrador. If one had hoped that a life in the
wilds had succeeded in eradicating natural desires, those relapses in
the midst of war-time completely destroyed any such delusion. Every
day was full of excitement. Bombs fell on the city only twice while I
was there, and, moreover, we were bitterly disappointed that we did
not know it till we read the news in the morning paper. But every day
flying machines of all sorts sailed overhead. My interest never
failed to respond to the buzzing of some hurrying airship, or the
sight of a seaplane dropping out of heaven into the water and swimming
calmly ashore, waddling up the beach into its pen exactly like a great
duck.

One day it was the excitement of watching trawlers from the cliffs
firing-up mines; another, hunting along the beach among