s, each scrubbing the now
happy man ahead. An endless stream of garments advanced through
electric superheaters in parallel columns. There seemed as much
excitement about the chance of every man getting his own clothing back
as there is in the bran pie at a children's Christmas party.

While visiting the mud and squalor of a front trench in Flanders, only
a few yards from the enemy's lines, the cheery occupants offered to
brew some tea, exactly as we "boil our kettle" and have a good time in
the safety of our Northern backwoods. One day I picked up some bright
blue crystals. They proved to be "blue-stone," or sulphate of copper.
When my pilot noticed that its presence puzzled me, he remarked
casually, "There was a regimental dressing-station there a day or so
ago. Probably that is the remains of it."

On a siding at Calais station a veritable pyramid of filth met my
eyes. On inspection it proved to be odd old boots dug from the mud of
the battle-fields, and, sorted out from the other endless piles of
debris, brought back as salvage. To attack one pair of such boots is
depressing. Melancholia alone befitted the pile. Yet I saw close at
hand, through a series of sheds, this polluted current entering and
coming out at the other end new boots, at the rate of a thousand pairs
a day--the talisman not being a Henry Ford of boot-making, but just a
smiling English colonel in the sporting trousers of a mounted officer.

The ground was still under snow, and we drove over much ice and
through much slush as we returned to our base at Boulogne. My
colleagues had gone back to America and it was a terribly lonely
journey to London, though both steamer and train were crowded. The war
was not yet won, and I could not help feeling an intense desire to
remain and see it through with the brave, generous-hearted men who
were giving their lives for our sakes. Loneliness scarcely describes
my sensations; it felt more like desertion. One road to despair would
be the awful realization that one is not wanted. The work looming
ahead was the only comforting element, with the knowledge that the
best of wives and partners was waiting in London to help me out.

CHAPTER XXV

FORWARD STEPS

My return to the work after serving in France was embittered by a
violent attack made upon me in a St. John's paper. It was called forth
by a report of a lecture in Montreal where I had addressed the
Canadian Club. The meeting was organized by Newfound