ng shame and disrepute upon the profession.

* * * * *

The work in the office was diversified by a trip to Faversham with some
very keen and capable Voluntary Aid Detachment members, to help
improvise a temporary hospital for some Territorials who had gone sick.
And then my turn came for more active service. I was invited by the St.
John Ambulance to take out a party of nurses to Belgium for service
under the Belgian Red Cross Society.

Very little notice was possible, everything was arranged on Saturday
afternoon of all impossible afternoons to arrange anything in London,
and we were to start for Brussels at eight o'clock on Tuesday morning.

On Monday afternoon I was interviewing my nurses, saying good-bye
to friends--shopping in between--wildly trying to get everything
I wanted at the eleventh hour, when suddenly a message came
to say that the start would not be to-morrow after all. Great
excitement--telephones--wires--interviews. It seemed that there
was some hitch in the arrangements at Brussels, but at last it
was decided by the St. John's Committee that I should go over
alone the next day to see the Belgian Red Cross authorities before
the rest of the party were sent off. The nurses were to follow the
day after if it could be arranged, as having been all collected in
London, it was very inconvenient for them to be kept waiting long.

Early Tuesday morning saw me at Charing Cross Station. There were not
many people crossing--two well-known surgeons on their way to Belgium,
Major Richardson with his war-dogs, and a few others. A nurse going to
Antwerp, with myself, formed the only female contingent on board. It was
asserted that a submarine preceded us all the way to Ostend, but as I
never get further than my berth on these occasions, I cannot vouch for
the truth of this.

Ostend in the middle of August generally means a gay crowd of bathers,
Cook's tourists tripping to Switzerland and so on; but our little party
landed in silence, and anxious faces and ominous whispers met us on our
arrival on Belgian soil. It was even said that the Germans were marching
on Brussels, but this was contradicted afterwards as a sensational
canard. The Red Cross on my luggage got me through the _douane_
formalities without any trouble. I entered the almost empty train and we
went to Brussels without stopping.

At first sight Brussels seemed to be _en fete_, flags were waving from
every window, B