I saw Lord Kitchener in the town one day; he had come to confer with
Joffre, Sir John French, Monsieur Poincaré, and Mr. Churchill, at a
meeting held at the Chapeau Rouge Hotel. Rather too many valuable men in
one room, I thought--especially with so many spies about! Three men in
English officers' uniforms were found to be Germans the other day and
taken out and shot.

The Duchess of Sutherland has a hospital at our old Casino at Malo les
Bains, and has made it very nice. I had a long chat with a Coldstream
man who was there. He told me he was carried to a barn after being shot
in the leg and the bone shattered. He lay there for six days before he
was found, with nothing to eat but a few biscuits. He dressed his own
wound.

"But," he said, "the string of my puttee had been driven in so far by
the shot I couldn't find it to get the thing off, so I had to bandage
over it."

I went down to the station one day to see if anything could be done for
the wounded there. They are coming in at the rate of seven hundred a
day, and are laid on straw in an immense goods-shed. They get nothing to
eat, and the atmosphere is so bad that their wounds can't be dressed.
They are all patient, as usual, only the groans are heartbreaking
sometimes. We are arranging to have soup given to them, and a number of
ambulance men arrived who will remove them to hospital ships and trains.
But the goods-shed is a shambles, and let us leave it at that.[1]

[1] It must not be thought that in this and in subsequent
passages referring to the sufferings of the wounded Miss Macnaughtan
alludes to any hardships endured by British troops. Her time in