Such kitchens may be bought for two hundred and fifty dollars, with a
horse to draw them. They are really sublimated steam cookers, with the
hot water used to make coffee when they reach the trenches. I should
say, then, surgical supplies and hospital equipment, field kitchens,
jams of all sorts, canned beans, cigarettes and rubber boots! A number
of field kitchens have already been sent over. A splendid Englishman
attached to the Belgian Army has secured funds for a few more. But
many are needed. I have seen a big and brawny Belgian officer, with a
long record of military bravery behind him, almost shed tears over the
prospect of one of these kitchens for his men.

I took many pictures that morning--of dogs, three abreast, hauling
_mitrailleuse_, the small and deadly quick-firing guns, from the word
_mitraille_, a hail of balls; of long lines of Belgian lancers on
their undipped and shaggy horses, each man carrying an eight-foot
lance at rest; of men drilling in broken boots, in wooden shoes
stuffed with straw, in carpet slippers. I was in furs from head to
foot--the same fur coat that has been, in turn, lap robe, bed clothing
and pillow--and I was cold. These men, smiling into my camera, were
thinly dressed, with bare, ungloved hands. But they were smiling.

Afterward I learned that many of them had no underclothing, that the
blue tunics and trousers were all they had. Always they shivered, but
often also they smiled. Many of them had fought since Liège; most of
them had no knowledge of their families on the other side of the line
of death. When they return to their country, what will they go back
to? Their homes are gone, their farm buildings destroyed, their horses
and cattle killed.

But they are a courageous people, a bravely cheery people. Flor every