within the range of a modern gun; within an hour by steamer and
twenty minutes by aeroplane.

The long battle-front from Switzerland to the North Sea had been
established. There was no getting around the Allied flank; there had
ceased to be a flank. To win Calais, Germany must crush through by
main force, without any manœuvre. From the cafés where the British
journalists gathered England received its news, which they gleaned
from refugees and stragglers and passing officers. They wrote
something every day, for England must have something about that
dizzy, head-on wrestle in the mud, that writhing line of changing
positions of new trenches rising behind the old destroyed by German
artillery. The British were fighting with their last reserves on the Ypres-
Armentiéres line. The French divisions to the north were suffering no
less heavily, and beyond them the Belgians were trying to hold the
last strip of their land which remained under Belgian sovereignty.
Cordons of guards which kept back the observer from the struggle
could not keep back the truth. Something ominous was in the air.

It was worth while being in that old town as it waited on the issue in
the late October rains. Its fishermen crept out in the mornings from
the shelter of its quays, where refugees gathered in crowds hoping to
get away by steamer. Like lost souls, carrying all the possessions
they could on their backs, these refugees. There was numbness in
their movements and their faces were blank--the paralysis of brain
from sudden disaster. The children did not cry, but mechanically
munched the dry bread given them by their parents.

The newspaper men said that "refugee stuff" was already stale;
eviction and misery were stale. Was Calais to be saved? That was