building, and while our officer goes within, we retreat into a side
street to wait. But my thoughts are busy. For that building, of which
the side-front is still visible, is the brain of the British Army in
France, and on the men who work there depend the fortunes of that
distant line where our brothers and sons are meeting face to face the
horrors and foulnesses of war. How many women whose hearts hang on the
war, whose all is there, in daily and nightly jeopardy, read the words
"British Headquarters" with an involuntary lift of soul, an invocation
without words! Yet scarcely half a dozen Englishwomen in this war will
ever see the actual spot. And here it is, under my eyes, the cold March
sun shining fitfully on it, the sentry at the door, the khaki figures
passing in and out. I picture to myself the rooms within, and the news
arriving of General Gough's advance on the Ancre, of that German retreat
as to which all Europe is speculating.

But we move on--to a quiet country house in a town garden--the
Headquarters Mess of the Intelligence Department. Here I find, among our
kind hosts, men already known to me from my visit of the year before,
men whose primary business it is to watch the enemy, who know where
every German regiment and German Commander are, who through the aerial
photography of our airmen are now acquainted with every step of the
German retreat, and have already the photographs of his second line. All
the information gathered from prisoners, and from innumerable other
sources, comes here; and the department has its eye besides on
everything that happens within the zone of our Armies in France. For a
woman to be received here is an exception--perhaps I may say an
honour--of which I am rather tremulously aware. Can I make it worth
while? But a little conversation with these earnest and able men shows
plainly that they have considered the matter like any other incident in
the day's work. _England's Effort_ has been useful; therefore I am to be