Great lorries and transports went out from the French coast towns and
disappeared beyond the horizon; motor ambulances and hospital trains
came in with the grim harvest. Men came and, like those who had gone
before, they too went out and did not come back. "Somewhere in
France," the papers said. Such letters as they wrote came from
"somewhere in France." What was happening then, over there, beyond the
horizon, "somewhere in France"?

And now that I have been beyond the dead line many of these questions
have answered themselves. France is saying nothing, and fighting
magnificently, Belgium, with two-thirds of her army gone, has still
fifty thousand men, and is preparing two hundred thousand more.

Instead of merely an honorary position, she is holding tenaciously,
against repeated onslaughts and under horrible conditions, the flooded
district between Nieuport and Dixmude. England, although holding only
thirty-two miles of front, beginning immediately south of Ypres, is
holding that line against some of the most furious fighting of the
war, and is developing, at the same time, an enormous fighting machine
for the spring movement.[A]

[Footnote A: This is written of conditions in the early spring of
1915. Although the relative positions of the three armies are the
same, the British are holding a considerably longer frontage.]

The British soldier is well equipped, well fed, comfortably
transported. When it is remembered that England is also assisting to
equip all the allied armies, it will be seen that she is doing much
more than holding the high seas.