seem--in the bases--to have slipped through them already, measuring by any
of the ordinary ratios of work to time. On my return home, a diplomat
representing one of the neutral nations, told me that the Military
Secretary of his staff had been round the English bases in France, and had
come back with his "eyes starting out of his head." Having seen them
myself, the phrase seemed to me quite natural.

Then, last of all, as the winter evening fell, we turned toward the
canteen at the railway-station. We found it going on in an old goods'
shed, simply fitted up with a long tea and coffee bar, tables and chairs;
and in some small adjacent rooms. It was filled from end to end with a
crowd of soldiers, who after many hours of waiting, were just departing
for the front. The old shabby room, with its points of bright light, and
its shadowy sides and corners, made a Rembrandtesque setting for the
moving throng of figures. Some men were crowding round the bar; some were
writing letters in haste to post before the train went off; the piano was
going, and a few, gathered round it, were singing the songs of the day, of
which the choruses were sometimes taken up in the room. The men--drafts
going up to different regiments on the line--appeared to me to come from
many parts. The broad Yorkshire and Cumbrian speech, Scotch, the cockney
of the Home Counties, the Northumberland burr, the tongues of Devon and
Somerset--one seemed to hear them all in turn. The demands at the counter
had slackened a little, and I was presently listening to some of the talk
of the indefatigable helpers who work this thing night and day. One of
them drew a picture of the Canadians, the indomitable fighters of Ypres
and Loos, of their breathless energy, and impatience of anything but the
quickest pace of life, their appetites!--half a dozen hard-boiled eggs, at
_3d_ each, swallowed down in a moment of time; then of the
French-Canadians, their Old World French, their old-world Catholicism,
simple and passionate. One of these last asked if there was any chance of