operations in Flanders, going out to the front in the morning and
returning to the Hotel St. Antoine at night. I doubt if war
correspondence has ever been carried on under such comfortable,
even luxurious, conditions. "Going out to the front" became as
commonplace a proceeding as for a business man to take the
morning train to the city. For one whose previous campaigning had
been done in Persia, Mexico and North Africa and the Balkans, it
was a novel experience to leave a large and fashionable hotel after
breakfast, take a run of twenty or thirty miles over stone-paved
roads in a powerful and comfortable car, witness a battle--provided,
of course, that there happened to be a battle on that day's list of
events--and get back to the hotel in time to dress for dinner.
Imagine it, if you please! Imagine leaving a line of battle, where
shells were shrieking overhead and musketry was crackling along
the trenches, and moaning, blood-smeared figures were being
placed in ambulances, and other blood-smeared figures who no
longer moaned were sprawled in strange attitudes upon the ground
--imagine leaving such a scene, I say, and in an hour, or even less,
finding oneself in a hotel where men and women in evening dress
were dining by the light of pink-shaded candles, or in the marble-
paved palm court were sipping coffee and liqueurs to the sound of
water splashing gently in a fountain.




II. The City Of Gloom


In order to grasp the true significance of the events which preceded